The Electric Vehicle Timebomb, By James Reed
The mania for electric vehicles (EV), the environmental elites stop gap strategy to keep the show running in a fashion before people can be locked down in 15-minuted prisons with no car at all, had gripped Europe. But it was not long before people were exposed to some of the hazards of these so-called ecologically sustainable form of transport. Forgetting about the enormous pollution made getting the rare earths needed for the batteries, it was not long before spectacular car fires occurred from igniting batteries. Fire fighters had quite a job dealing with these fires and often had to let the fires burn out, polluting the environment with highly toxic gasses. Yes, but ecologically sustainable highly toxic gasses!
Now, here comes the kicker, and it is the batteries again. It has been found that the market for second hand electric vehicles is a lemon, as the batteries only last reliably for eight years, and are so expensive to replace that a new car looks more economical, only it is not. The short battery life is an inevitable outcome of the EV technology, unlike conventional fossil fuels. With all the money spent on this EV craze, technologies could have been produced to reduce to an absolute minimum any pollution from conventional news fossil fuel vehicles. But that would not have been woke.
"Money Mail can today reveal a timebomb looming in the second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs).
Our investigation found that many EVs could become almost impossible to resell because of their limited battery life.
Experts said that the average EV battery guarantee lasts just eight years. After this time, the battery may lose power more quickly and so reduce mileage between charges.
Many EVs will lose up to 12 per cent of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.
Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.
In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be ten times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.
That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.
Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.
Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.
This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.
Motor expert Shahzad Sheikh, who runs the YouTube channel Brown Car Guy, said: 'With a decaying battery, the range will be poor and you may find it becomes increasingly hard to resell the vehicle after eight years.
Buyers will know that they'll only get a small amount of life out of the car so will pay only a small sum, if anything at all.'
This problem is exacerbated by the fact all new cars coming onto the market by 2035 will be electric and motorists will have to get used to paying around £10,000 more than its petrol equivalent, for a vehicle which is not built to last as long.
Take a new petrol-driven Renault Clio — it costs around £20,000, while its all-electric opposite, the Renault Zoe, costs closer to £30,000.
While you can drive a traditional petrol or diesel car for around 200,000 miles over 14 years before the engine needs fixing or replacing, by comparison a new EV is typically guaranteed under a warranty for 100,000 miles over eight years.
Should your petrol engine need replacing you can expect to pay around £5,000, but replace the battery on your EV outside warranty and you're looking at an eye-watering £13,000 to £40,000, depending on the make of your car, if you fit a manufacturer's new unit."
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